f<Tt^ 



<% J) V^ . rt/o , 7^Y^ I (^ j"j J 



. ; ^v> 



OUli FA:\riLV OF STATKS. 



ORATION 



l)KMVKHi:i) IJKFoitj: TUK 



/4^u- 



PHI BKTA KAPPA SOCIETY 



AMHERST COLLEGE, 



NEIIEMIAII ADAAfS D. 1). 



BOSTON AND (".MBRIlXJi; : 
JAMES MUNllO': AND COMl'ANV. ' 




Gass L^71 



OUK FAMILY OF STATES. , 



^37«> 



on_A.Tio:N 



^■•^ a 



DKLIVEUEI) liEFOUK THK 



PHI BETA KAPPA SOCIETY 



^J-f ■" 



AMHERST COLLEGE, 



BY 



NEIIEMIAH ADAMS, D. D. 



BOSTON AND CAMBRIDGE: 
JAMES MUNROE AND COMPANY 

• ^ 18G1. 






Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1860, by 

James Munroe and Company, 

in the Cleric's Office of the District Court for the District of 
Massachusetts. 



RIVERSIDE, CAMBRIDGE: 
PRINTED BY 11. O. HOUGHTON. 



Boston, Dec. 7, 18G0. 
Rev. N. Adams, D. D. 

Dear Sir, — Having seen extracts from your P. B. K. 
Oration at Amherst, and believing that its circulation just now 
will be timely and useful, we respectfully ask permission to 
issue it in pamphlet form. 

Very truly yours, 

James Munuoe & Co. 



Boston, Dec. 11, 1860. 
Messi-s. James Munroe & Co. 

Gentlemen, — The Oration was delivered in August 1858, 
by request of the Society, at the failure of one who had been 
appointed to the service the previous year. There was but little 
time either to select the subject, or to write upon it ; and the sub- 
ject itself, I felt at the time, was not sufficiently of that literary 
cast which the occasion ordinarily required. But as I complied 
with the sudden call without apology, I will, in the same way, 
comply with your request, with only the above explanation, and 
without any additions to the manuscript, — glad that the theme 
has so much interest for one of our most eminent publishing 
houses in Boston at the present time. 

Yours for the Union, 

N. Adams. 



ORATION 



THERE is a theme of deep, rich interest to 
American scholars, indeed to every one who 
feels the spell and charm of social life, — and 
this occasion affords an opportunity to dwell upon 
it, as it should more frequently be contemplated, 
apart froui politics; — it is — our family of 
States. 

It is good to have men and things sometimes 
present themselves to us as this world appears to 
observers from other worlds — its smoke, dust, 
rough surfaces, transmuted into one pure orb, its 
sorrows and contentions hushed to that music of 
which it is said — 

" There's not the smallest orl) -wiruh thou hehoM'st, 
But in his motion like an anirel sings, 
Still ({uiring to the young-eyed eherubins." 

My theme, in the hands of one who couhl do it 
justice, would be — to quote from the same play, 
like those •' enchanted herbs" which Medea gath- 
ered, under the softest moonliglit, to ** renew (►Id 
yEson." 



6 OUR FAMILY OP STATES. 

The God of our fathers has divided us, ac- 
cordino- to his own primeval idea of beauty and 
g"lory, as manifested in his own Israel, into 
States. The multiplicity in unity which, as sep- 
arate States under one confederacy, we enjoy, is 
a perpetual source of useful excitement, by the 
sense of individuality, and by the consciousness of 
relationship, which are both intensified through 
their mutual reaction. There is such a curious 
arterial, nervous system in our civil polity, that 
few Britons, who have not been in this country, 
and not all who have been here, can be made to 
understand our Federal and State Governments ; 
and foreigners are frequently making mistakes 
in judo;^ing of us on this account. It is difficult 
for a stranger to understand how it is that in 
the different States there can be so much that 
is pecuhar, created by peculiarities in the origin 
of each, its history, laws, customs, productions, 
and pursuits. It is a beautiful feature in our 
relationship as States, that in one branch of the 
National Government, the Senate, we see the 
smallest commonwealths admitted to an equal 
privilege with the largest. Delaware sends her 
two Senators : New York, Pennsylvania, sends 
no more. " There is little Benjamin with their 
ruler ; the princes of Judah and their council." 
All these commonwealths rejoice under one com- 
mon flag, into whose field one star after another 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 7 

ascends almost as peacefully as the stars arise in 
the sky ; for though one and another has risen 
red, and through a horizon which was lowerino- 
it has soon passed into peaceful and full com- 
munion with its fellows. The American citizen, 
finishing a short tour on the continent of Eu- 
rope, and the flag of his country first greeting 
his eye on some American highland, finds himself 
counting — so peaceftdly has it come to pass — 
whether there is one more star in the field of 
that flag than when he left home; and yet that 
quiet star may symholize the addition of a State 
to the American Union as picturesque as Ger- 
many, and larger than France. Thus we live, 
" U Pluribiis TJmim^' the Custom-House asserting 
the national prerogative in all the seaports, and 
no commonwealth collecting a farthing of tribute 
from the merchantmen for itself; and yet each 
State having a life of its own, which makes the 
outgoings of the morning and evening there, 
to rejoice. 

Each separate State has its own organic life ; it 
is a little world of itself. How it came to pass 
that the States were made willing to be confeder- 
ated as they now are, what jealousies there were 
at ceding to the general government its necessary 
constitutional powers, and how these j)owers were 
yielded, as it were, inch by inch, and how these 
young, sovereign commonwealths each sj)oke and 



8 OUR FAMILY OP STATES. 

felt, in doing it, as men would who might be in 
danger of having their personal identity and their 
consciousness invaded, is too familiar to need 
more than a passing allusion. 

Few things are more interesting than to become 
well acquainted with one of these States. There 
you will learn new tales of early heroic adventure, 
legends, Scandinavian mounds, stones marked, or 
placed, mysteriously, and carrying you back, per- 
haps, to Asia and hoary antiquity for their probable 
solutions ; rivers, each with its romantic rise, and 
course, and tributary streams, themselves historical, 
and dear to many a town and village; mountains, 
caves, forests, prairies, natural bridges, springs ; 
and then a whole new Flora and Fauna; new 
kinds of fishes, curious geological formations, mar- 
vellous foot-prints of man, beast, or bird; great, 
solemn marks on the hill-tops in the rocks ; the 
arts adapting themselv^es to the local features of 
that State ; its life in the wilds, and, not far off, 
its city -life; its old families and their history; 
its early records, its historical collections, its 
modern changes, its gems of beauty in the shape 
of dwellings and pubhc edifices and gardens ; its 
old graveyards and new cemeteries ; here and 
there some idioms, or a mere shibboleth of pro- 
nunciation, which link a portion of the people 
with some old history, and which serve to identify 
them ; and then the going forth of the seasons 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 9 

with their diversified liibors and fruits, the clinui- 
tolog-y, the sunsets, all seemingly unlike those with 
which the day pronounces elsewhere its bene(hc- 
tion ; and the ordering of the constellations, which 
encamp and march there by apparently new 
arrangements; old ocean itself consenting to the 
sovereignty of that State by answering to some 
name with which the discoverers and early settlers 
baptized it ; and the festivals, the articles of food 
peculiar to that region, the style of personal 
beauty and manners, the fashions ; the great as- 
semblies, where the distinguished men of that 
region appear; in short, the innumerable ways 
in which natural and moral and social beauty, 
there, as Wordsworth says, 

" is spread o'er the earth, 

In stray gifts, to be claimed by whoever shill find; 
While a rich, loving kindnes?, redundant and kin'l, 

Moves all nature to gladness and mirth." 

And then, withal — for what were music without 
the minor key ? — the histories of sadness, the 
controversies, the courts of law, the modes of 
funerals, and the customs of mourning, — all these, 
and unutterably more, go to make uj) the goings- 
on of life, distinct, uncommunicated life, in each 
and every one of these thirty-three nations which 
are called States. Let a man take one of them, 
Maine, for example, and give himself to the 



10 OUR FAMILY OF -STATES. 

pleasurable study of that youngest, yet most 
majestic of the Atlantic States ; or let him 
thoroughly understand the State of New York, 
where, as though it were an earthly patent-office, 
the Creator has caused almost everythino- great 
to make its record ; and he will enlarge his 
mind, and be filled with resources of pleasure, 
like that which Madame de Stael says every one 
has who learns a new language ; and when he 
visits the old world he will carry in his mind a 
useful scale of dimensions for viewing natural ob- 
jects, while thoughts of capability and future 
greatness here, will make him grateful for the 
good land which God has given him. 

We cover so many degrees of latitude and 
longitude that there are few productions of any 
clime which are not, or may not be, cultivated 
in the United States or their territories. Our 
prairies are objects of wonder to Europeans ; our 
forests and the changes of the leaf in autumn 
have attracted the notice of transatlantic poets. 
One of the most striking and beautiful traits of 
scenery in our part of the country is the large 
sheets of water which are constantly greeting the 
eye : — " ponds," alas ! the people call them ; 
but in Switzerland, or the north of England, 
they would be lakes, with romantic or classic 
names. We have lakes, properly so called, with 
an extent of coast embracing more miles than 



OUll FAMILY OF STATES. 11 

even our seaboard ; sucli rivers, such a variety 
and extent of mines, such a diversified face of 
country, now regular without monotony, now ir- 
regular and wild without being precijjitous and 
uninhabitable, such mannnoth caves, such water- 
fiills, as are possessed by no other part of the 
globe. We have winter in all its dread majesty, 
and, also, beauty ; snow-storms wild as polar 
tempests, ice of sufficient thickness to survive 
transportation to the remotest east ; trees glazed 
with fairy frostwork like enchanted grottos and 
palaces, and cold sufficient to satisfy any love of 
extremes; and ere it comes, our wild birds, stretch- 
ing their flight to our Southern borders, remind 
us that wild flowers will bloom in one part of 
our land while the rigors of winter yet reign in 
another. We need only to know more of the 
land in which we dwell to feel enthusiasm for its 
natural endowments as great as that whicli Jias 
ever been felt by the men of any nation for the 
land of their birth. 

If there be a people in history who have occa- 
sion to be grateful, not to say proud, of their 
origin and ancestry, we, if true worth and true 
heroism are considered, are that people. Indeed, 
no nation ever had so much reason for gratitude 
and happiness in this respect. This is true 
whether we look to .Jamestown, or Maryland, or 
Pennsylvania; to Georgia with her Oglethorpe, 



12 OUR FAMILY OF' STATES. 

or South Carolina Avith her Hug-uenots; or to 
the Pilgrim Fathers of New England, or to those 
Scotch-Irishmen who came to New Hampshire, 
Pennsylvania, and other States, and are represent- 
ed to us in these days by Andrew Jackson and 
Calhoun. If we cannot say that the forefathers 
of New England, like the founder of the Hebrew 
nation, went out, not knowing whither they went, 
it is because they went out with the certain 
knowledge of having a wilderness for their home, 
not with hope alternating with fear as to tlieir 
destination ; but with positive assurance of hard- 
ship and trials. Like the Hebrew patriarchs, in- 
deed, "by faith they dwelt in tabernacles;" wild 
Indians eying them from behind the trees, and 
watching on the hills for the smoke of new^ ham- 
lets, to guide their attacks ; their cooking-uten- 
sils hung over the fire on poles between the 
trees ; " the bullock," as one of their writers 
says, •' lowing in the shed, and the lion answei'- 
ing him from the thicket ; " for " there be Lyons 
here," says another ; exploration, sickness, death, 
Indian wars only deepening their confidence in 
God, who, they said, had honored them by calling 
them to follow Christ into a waste, howling wil- 
derness. If you wish for rudeness and barbarity 
in hardship, for the origin of a State, did Rom- 
ulus and Remus lie at the breast of such a wolf 
as the Pilgrim Fathers did at Plymouth ? If 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 18 

you seek for motives as giving- chaiacter to an 
enterprise, all the conquerors of the glohe may 
not he named in comparison with those wlio, not 
for territory, nor for gold-mines, nor as adven- 
turers, nor as shipwrecked huccaneers, came here 
not only for freedom to worship God, hut, as King 
James's Plymouth Charter says, that they might 
"reduce such savages as they should find wander- 
ing in desolation and distress, to civil society and 
the Christian religion." While remote antiquity 
and fabulous tradition have obscured the oriofin 
of many kingdoms, the history of the Pilgrims 
is so identified with the history of England, be- 
sides being in itself distinct and well defined, that 
it furnishes more materials for the fancy, and 
more that impresses the imagination, than any 
veiled history, however romantic, attbrds. Still, 
if we need the effect of obscurity in our begin- 
ning to gratify the imagination, we have it in 
those remarkable surmises respecting this conti- 
nent, which seem to have existed so many ages 
before it was known. There is a singular allu- 
sion in the writings of the Latin poet. Seneca, 
about the beginning of the Christian era, to an 
undiscovered continent. " The time will come," 
he says, " in remote years, when the ocean will 
unloose the j)resent boundaries of nature, and a 
great country will ap})ear. Another Typhis will 
discover new worlds, and Tliule will no longer 



14h our family -of states. 

be the limit of the earth." The Elysiaii Fields, 
spoken of by Homer and Horace, were imag- 
inary islands- west of Africa ; and thus there 
existed in the human mind, ages since, a pre- 
sentiment that discovery was not yet exhausted. 
Columbus insisted that the balance of the globe 
required us to believe in the existence of this 
continent. In a book published at Boston in 
177^5 called " America known to the Ancients," 
allusion is made to the circumstance that Hanno, 
the Carthaginian general, had sailed thirty days 
westward from the pillars of Hercules, (or Straits 
of Gibraltar,) and the supposition is entertained 
that he must have seen this continent, or the 
Western or West India Islands. But if it were 
so, tradition, like people who were raised from 
the dead, was made to hold her peace respecting 
it, till, in the progress of human events, a suit- 
able people was raised up to be the progenitors 
of a nation on these shores. God did not open 
the gates of this western continent to such a 
people as the Moors fleeing from Spain, nor 
to wandering adventurers from the dark-minded 
hordes of continental Europe or of Asia. Fer- 
dinand and Isabella the Catholic, were not per- 
mitted to make settlements on this territory. 
Spanish America, our elder sister, was prevented ^ 
from invading this future home of the English 
Pilgrims. The Cabots, with their Bristol crews, 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 15 

which had for many years been employed in the 
Icelandic fisheries, completed the work wiiich Co- 
lumbus had left unfinished, and in time the land 
was planted with men, the like of whom, as set- 
tlers, the world had never seen. As time rolls 
on, and distance and its enchantments multiply, 
our poets and tale-writers, the writers of songs 
and ballads throughout the States, will have 
sources of inspiration to their patriotism in the 
national origin and history, the associations with 
which, like the fountains of the great deep in its 
genesis, are now slowly strengthening themselves 
till they become profound and wide for the illim- 
itable range of fancy. 

While the increase of population in Great 
Britain for ten years was three hundred thousand, 
for tlie same time in this country it was seven 
hundred and fifty thousand. 

If we were like the population of India or 
China, where human beings are measured, as it 
were, by the acre or mile, our great increase would 
be important to the eye of political economy only 
as presenting so many more mouths for some great 
staple of food. But as we shall continue to need 
something besides rice, and something more luxu- 
rious than cotton cloth, with our present rate of 
increase we shall draw^ largely upon the resources 
of the whole earth. The United States contain 
three million four hundred thousand square miles, 



16 OUR FAMILY OF^ STATES. 

while England and Scotland contain only ninety 
thousand. The State of Maine is as large as 
the whole of Scotland ; Georgia could hold Eng- 
land and Wales. And yet the British posses- 
sions on this continent are a larger territory than 
the United States. National greatness is surely 
not reckoned by the square mile, nor by popula- 
tion. The remotest East may yet look to us 
as the great central power in the commercial 
world. When Tyre ceased to be the emporium 
of ancient commerce, it was a greater shock to 
the commercial world than it would be if bills 
of exchange on Boston and New York, instead 
of London, should be the familiar symbols of 
trade. We shall no doubt see further illustra- 
tions of the divine purposes which ])laced this 
western continent by itself between two oceans, 
and kept it secluded till the world was able to 
people it with a seed which should be w^orthy to 
fulfil its great destiny. Our afternoon has not 
yet come ; and if God be for us, it will never 
come. As the convexity of the earth is so grad- 
ual that the eye does not perceive it, so the great 
career of this nation may have no assignable 
zenith. God has not appointed nations to wrath 
any more than individuals ; he is no more willing 
that nations should perish than men. A nation's 
life may not hereafter necessarily be like human 
life with its infancy, manhood, old age and death. 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. ]J 

The tides of commerce breaking* open new ports 
for trade, and piling- sand bars, as it were, at 
the mouths of harbors, it is true, bring- decay 
to nations, and give importance and renown to 
others. But Venice and the Dutch Repubhc 
will not, in their decline, be the symbols of 
this nation, if, with our greater natural and social 
advantages, we fear God ; and especially if we 
propagate the Gospel in the earth — the surest 
means of maintaining it at home, by a law 
analogous to that which connects exports with 
the prosperity of agriculture and manufactures. 
If we do this, there is enough in our natural, 
social, political constitution to excite the expec- 
tation of perpetual increase and prosperity, and, 
as the end of all and the highest honor to which 
man can attain, we shall be benefactors to the 
intellectual, moral, and spiritual interests of our 
fellow men. 

We have no titled dignity nor feudal proprie- 
torship to protect the influence of unworthy men. 
He who would rise to eminence by being the 
architect of his own fortune, must build that 
fortune as some require their bees to build their 
cells — in a glass house ; — so that the people 
know a man thoroughly, his going out, his 
coming in, his down-sitting and his up-rising. 

No public speaker, ancient or modern, ever 
had an audience better fitted to inspire him, or 



18 OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 

to gratify his best ambition, than he who, speak- 
ing;' on any pubhc occasion, from a platform, or 
pulpit, in a city, or village, at the opening of a 
railroad, or in behalf of Washington's tomb, 
consecrating a cemetery, or naming a New 
England hill, is conscious, as every American 
speaker may be, that, if his words be worthy 
of attention, he may almost think of being lis- 
tened to as well-nigh instantaneously as sound 
can travel, by a whole nation such as this. If 
he or his theme awakens the general regard, 
he may, by the slightest effort of imagination, 
see two oceans commanding silence on their 
shores, that they may listen. 

" no ripple breaks the reach, 



But silvery waves go noiseless up the beach." 

There is an image of that audience, however, 
which may come to him while he speaks, more 
subduing still, and that is, a group of thirty- 
three sisters. As the goddess of beauty came 
in a cloud to a Grecian warrior in battle, or 
as one, pursuing some great and good enter- 
prise or performing some act of love, catches 
a sight of a constellation which he and the 
family had, years ago, chosen for their cyno- 
sure, the American orator, with the image of 
all our States present to his mind, feels his 
" noble rage " mount higher, and, if he has a 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 19 

large heart, lie will speak as only he can speak 
whose thoughts are the offspring and pledges 
of love. 

What names we have ! Of all the names 
of nations there is none so heautiful as ours. 
There is a household charm ahout the words 
which compose it, and still they are the name 
of a mighty people. " God brought him out of 
Egypt; he hath, as it were, the strength of a 
unicorn." The masculine pride which loves to 
give feminine titles to noble objects, and gratifies 
its love of beauty and grace in doing so, has 
clothed our stalwart Commonwealths, many of 
them, with maidenly associations in their names. 
" The Old Do.iilnion " is Viroj-inia. The State 
which was like a rampart of cotton bales to 
the Britisli cannon, with Old Hickory's arm 
over her, is Louisiana. The brave advocate and 
example of toleration on a large scale, the daugh- 
ter of Lord Baltimore, is crowned with the name 
of Maryland ; Florida, with flowing garb and a 
certain Seminole air of beauty, and the Carolinas, 
and States with names — found in every house- 
hold — which are mere " matters of fact," and 
Indian names, enshrining some legend or natural 
feature, or some word or " smile " of the Great 
Spirit, — all these belong to our household. All 
these wait on the instructions of one whom the 
people delight to honor. Perhaps they send and 



20 OUR FAMILY OP STATES. 

call him each within her borders, and with elo- 
quence inspired by the ever-varying associations 
with their personal histories, he makes their 
hearts burn within them, and binds them closer 
tog-ether in the bonds of household love, as he 
rehearses the character and deeds of one whose 
name awakens throughout the world an all but 
supernatural reverence. If any age since the 
crolden age of Greece furnishes anything that 
brings to mind her wandering bard, or the fath- 
ers of the drama, or the orators that swayed her 
States, it is to be seen in our day in a son of 
New Enoland, going from one great household 
to another of this family of States, and breathing 
the enchantment of domestic love upon the East 
and West, the North and South. What other 
land o-ives just such opportunity for such a spec- 
tacle 1 This man and his mission are a good 
exponent of our domestic, national relationship ; 
and the example has, perhaps, its greatest interest 
in its immeasurable applicability to other things 
of the same and various kinds which will contrib- 
ute to the healthful life and permanence of our 
nation. It is one of the greatest things which 
can be done for States or individuals, to make 
them love one another. Love is diplomatist, ar- 
bitrator, plenipotentiary. The farmer was right, 
indeed, who told his neighbor that good fences 
were an excellent means of good neighborhood ; 



OUR FAIMILY OF STATES. 21 

but tlie fences being- as they should be, we need 
to think of sometliing^ else besides poachers and 
the impounding of cattle ; nor would we consider 
our relation to each other, as a fjiniily of States, 
as having its great exani])le in the habits of the 
bears, who peacefidly " spend the season of their 
hybernation in adjoining dens." What is life 
to a misanthrope or churl ? It is not good for 
man to be alone, — neither for the common- 
wealth, nor for the individual. Japan is alone. 
Let scholars, whose desire for the interchange of 
thoughts should not be surpassed by the enthu- 
siasm of men in the industrial arts, dwell more 
on the inestimable value of a land naturally af- 
filiated in all its parts like this, to one wdio has 
anything to say which deeply moves himself. 
As light and sound are dependent upon an at- 
mosphere for transmission, fellowship between 
the different parts of a country is essential to 
those who desire to impress themselves on the 
minds and hearts of their fellow men. 

That which is true of the American orator in 
this respect, has a more impressive illustration in 
the American writer. Our country, as a field for 
the writer of the English tongue, is ap|)reciated 
by British authors ; nor is there one who w^ould 
not be happy if, retaining all his British advan- 
tages, he (!ould have our North and West and 
South for an ima^e of his readers, as he writes. 



22 OUR FAMILY OF -STATES. 

Our country in its literary surface, so to speak, 
has an emblem in the surface of the best agri- 
cultural parts of England, where a traveller from 
New England is deeply impressed with the green 
hedges which serve them instead of stone walls; 
so that while you see boundaries all over the 
landscape, they seem to be for ornament rather 
than for defence ; they are, it is true, disjunc- 
tive, and yet they are conjunctions disjunctive ; 
they look like graceful apologies for any seeming 
difference between " meum and tuimi " ; they give 
softness and repose to the whole landscape. So 
it is theoretically with our States. 

It is this family of States, to whom you, 
fellow-students, are to send forth the creations 
of your genius and talent — the fruits, in every 
form, of your literary industry ; this congregation 
of nations, in every one of which, if we be 
worthv the name of scholars, we shall find more 
than a welcome — an enthusiasm enhanced by 
the family-love which, below the alluvium of jeal- 
ousies and alienations, dwells deep in the heart 
of each commonwealth toward sister States. 
When an eminent sculptor arose, not many years 
since, in the comparatively new State of Ohio, 
the old States had one thrill of delight which 
they could not have felt if Old Virginia, or the 
Old Bay State, had been his home. They forgot 
for the time that he was born in Vermont ; for 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 28 

he bad passed through several different occupa- 
tions in Ohio, and it was there that he came forth 
as sculptor. Let any man put f<jrth a work of 
genius, and the associations whicli we have with 
the State which nourished him, straightway 
tlu'ong' about him, and are imputed to him ; and 
we love tliat State afresh, as people love the 
mother of a man who, for any reason, has found 
his way to the general heart. 

Something more is true of this family of 
States besides its being such a field for the 
American scholar to sow with the seed of his 
genius. There has not been a land under the eye 
of that sun to-day, in which a scholar may find 
more to stimulate his own genius, than in this 
land of Commonwealths. Scotland, or Ireland, 
or Wales, is not so foreign to an Englishman as 
a place in which to lay the scene of a story, 
or from which to gather names and other 
materials for a ballad, as far separated States 
of this Union are to our Poets, and writers of 
prose. There is a prodigality of wealth of this 
kind awaiting our men of genius in this land. 

We may hope that the time will come when 
our Commonwealths will have each its own 
State Song, or Air, Hymn, or Melody, or by 
whatever name it may be called, as each has 
its own seal with its device and motto. The 
great natural feature of each State, its peculiar 



24 OUR FAMILY OF* STATES. 

origin, its historical renown, its battle-fields, its 
charmed names, will break forth with singing, 
taking some perpetual form of music and 
verse, the children of each State singing her 
hymn in their dispersions under foreign climes, 
by land and sea. The people of every Com- 
monwealth, in their social gatherings, doing 
honor to a guest, will sing his State Hymn, 
or listen to the air which is called by the name 
of his State ; and when we thus make melody 
in our hearts, and identify each other with 
songs of praise, — 

" Such music (as 'tis said) 

Before was never made 
But when of old the stars of morning sung, 

While the Creator great 

His constellations set, 
And the well-balanced world on hinges hung." 

It would not be strange if, in many cases, the 
Hymn or Ode of a State should be written by 
one not a native, nor even an adopted child, 
of that State ; but that a son of Missouri, 
for example, in a thrill of inspiration at his 
remembrance of the Green Mountains, lakes, 
and people of Vermont, should enshrine her 
name in his music or immortal verse. By 
such things our Union of States would be- 
come a loom-work of affection and attachments. 
It would be well if one school-book in every 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. ^.> 

school in the land should contain the seals of 
all our States ; thus assisting- our children to 
heconie familiar with the synihols of other 
States besides their own. Lessons in the knowl- 
edg-e of one another would thus be learned. 
There should also be more interchang-es of 
portraits and busts of their distinguished men 
by the several States ; for it is, after all, an 
insufficient view of the good which the repre- 
sentative arts can accomplish, to adorn our 
libraries and cabinets, as we oug-ht indeed 
always to do, with the likenesses of our own 
g-reat and good men. Public acts of amenity, 
graceful expressions of good feeling, and obei- 
sances, between public men and States, have a 
powerful influence on private character and hap- 
piness. There is a certain oil of which we 
read, which is the most potent of oils., and that 
is, — The Oil of Gladness. One drop of it has 
a wonderful effect to stop the grating of the 
individual heart ; would that it could be applied 
by us to one another more frequently ; it is 
good for States and for public men in their 
intercourse with each other. More frequent 
allusions, in a grateful spirit, to our inestimable 
common blessings, the recognition of good in 
each other, a sympathetic and discriminating 
manner of treating the sorrows aiul trials which 
we are severally called to bear, would make 



26 OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 

these States the happiest nation on the face of 
the earth. In the language of a sacred poet, — 
" O, may I see thy tribes rejoice!" God hasten 
the reign of good feeHng. 

It may be presumption to think that this 
union is indestructible ; for nations which have 
already perished teach us that, in ourselves and 
apart from obedience to God, our national fabric 
can easily be dissolved. But this land seems to 
be made for the human mind to exult in the 
fullest religious and civil liberty, to run the race 
of intellectual and moral greatness unassisted by 
adventitious helps, unimpeded by proscriptions of 
birth, or any private or social position. A very 
humble boy may be sitting on one of those seats, 
his feet not reaching the floor, who may be in his 
day the star by which this nation will steer her 
course to further renown. ^ 

We have had, and no doubt shall continue to 
have, our family controversies ; one State and an- 
other considering itself aggrieved, and one part of 
the family espousing or contesting its claims ; but 
we are yet the United States, and we must be, or 
dwindle, all of us, to petty sovereignties, vexatious 
one to another, a by- word among the nations. 

One effect of dismemberment would be to ex- 
cite prejudice and dislike in the people of the 
several States against each other. Nothing is 
of easier and more rapid growth than prejudice. 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. £7 

We should set loose all the biul passions of hiiinaii 
nature, with all their meannesses and bitterness 
and deadly strife, should we ever become hostile 
commonwealths. We could withstand the world 
in aruis ; but our peril is in ourselves. In the 
hei<>bt of prosperity we may, nevertheless, by being 
alienated one from another, fulfil these words : 

" Hearts that the world in vain has tried, 
And sorrow but more closely tied, 
That stood the storm when waves were rouoh, 
Yet, in a sunny hour, fall off ; — 
Like ships that have gone down at sea 
When heaven was all tranquillity." 

But there is a secret framework, of which 
most of us are as unconscious as we are of the 
ligaments in the body until they suffer damage, by 
means of wdiich we are held strongly together. 
Going into a paper-mill in Worcester county not 
long since, the proprietor, in answer to my in- 
quiry, told me that he made paper only for the 
newspaper press ; and in reply to the question, 
what newspaj)er establishments he supphed, he 
said that for fourteen years he had made paper 
for a New Orleans news[)a))er. It was an illus- 
tration of the way in which our States are bound 
together, and of the means, in part, by which they 
will be kept united. Differences of opinion, as 
we all know, have existed for the last fourteen 
years between Worcester county, Massachusetts, 



S8 OUR FAMILY OF -STATES. 

and New Orleans ; but, nevertheless, here was 
New Orleans sending her money to her opponent ; 
and her opponent was sending paper to her, on 
which to say whatever she mi^-ht please against 
her manufacturer. These things are stronger than 
the bars of a castle. A small electric cable, less 
than an inch in diameter, would be more powerful 
than the chain cables which moor frigates, to bind 
together the nations. 

We should be hopeful and cheerful. Instead 
of borrowing trouble, let us borrow largely of 
the future for joy and gladness, even at the risk 
of appearing a little fanatical ; for we shall then 
but counterpoise the little fanaticism in the other 
direction, which occasionally appears in various 
parts of the land. There were two partially in- 
sane brothers in one of the towns in this State many 
years ago, one of whom came into the meeting- 
house on the Sabbath, and putting his arm round 
a pillar, said, " In the name of God, I shall pull 
down this house." The people experienced some- 
thing corresponding to that which we call a panic ; 
but they were entirely composed by the turn of 
pleasantry which their feelings received when his 
brother stood upon his seat and cried out, " Let 
him try." He may have been as insane as his 
brother, but that house is yet standing. 

If in any section of the land where the in- 
ventive arts, rather than the sedative pursuits 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. QQ 

of agriculture, exert their influence, the human 
mind is greatly stimulated, we must expect that, 
in many cases, evil will he in proportion to the 
good, as good things and evil things growing 
together on the same soil are apt to he corre- 
spondingly great. We all know, for example, 
that if a soil can hoast of the largest sugar-cane, 
it will also he found to have the largest alliga- 
tors ; and those qualities which make that soil 
peculiar, will cause its monsters to he proportion- 
ately endowed. If, therefore, the human mind is 
greatly stimulated in any section, that people 
must not think that they are ahsolutely worse 
than all nations, or sections, hut must ascrihe it 
to those general influences which make all things 
among them great, and therefore they must not 
he astonished if they have distinguished puhlic 
thieves, and large specimens of unreasonahle 
men. We have no Inquisitions, nor laws against 
freedom of speech ; we suffer men to speak as 
they please if so he that they stop this side of 
hlasphemy ; else the law is invoked ; hut fanatics 
are usetully employed, under Providence, as de- 
monstrators of dangerous errors ; they teach us 
most impressively the ruinous consequences of 
their follies ; all is said which can he said on 
their side, and so we hecome more firndy estah- 
lished in the truth, and we are continually gain- 
ing converts to us in those who are afraid to 



30 OUR FAMILY OF. STATES. 

follow them any nearer to the gulf of perdi- 
tion. 

We must not fret ourselves because of evildoers. 
We must not be tempted, in any part of the 
land, to relinquish effort for the public refor- 
mation and general improvement, through dis- 
gust or impatience at difficulties which every- 
where demand courage and strength, and, withal, 
the meekness of wisdom. It is a bad sign 
when any detract from the reputation of their 
own immediate portion of this great national 
inheritance, instead of laboring faithfully and 
patiently for its prosperity and honor. The 
blessings of God's providence are distributed 
with wonderful consideration and benevolence to 
the various parts of the land. 

As Samoset cried to our forefathers at their 
landing-place, " Welcome, Englishmen ! " we wish 
to unite with the other States and make our 
whole land one Plymouth Rock to the weary 
and sorrowful of all lands. We look with the 
deepest interest into that wonderful kaleidescope, 
our Western population, to see what types of 
character are to present themselves ; nor will 
any of us be jealous if the seat of literary em- 
pire among us should pass beyond the moun- 
tains. We also confess with pleasure that 
which we have not unfrequently seen, that a 
Southern constitution with a Northern training 



OUR FAMILY OF STATES. 81 

affords a specimen of niiiid and manners, and 
of all that is beautiful and charming in man and 
in woman, such as cannot he surpassed in the 
whole human family. Our rich men desire to vie 
with their brethren through the land in consecrat- 
ing their wealth to the founding and endowing of 
literary institutions, thus building themselves im- 
perishahly into the minds of all generations. As 
every state and nation has its style of character, 
we desire to be emulous with other States in ev- 
erything which makes a people cultivated, urbane, 
and gives them that gentleness which makes us 
great. We may be allowed, without the charge 
of vanity, to think that we have here in New 
England some fruits of experience which are wor- 
thy of consideration and respect. As our Penob- 
scot foresters observe the moss which the trees 
collect on their north sides, and by this natural 
compass recover their way, so we of the North, 
if we have less of sun, and of rank and rapid 
growth than other parts of the land, have gath- 
ered about us some things which make it not 
wholly unsafe for others to walk by them. — 
The subject is full of delicate and practical rela- 
tions ; so that, if you find yourselves liable to 
take merely ideal views of things, be so good 
as to bear in mind the cautionary remark of 
a Professor of Natural Philosophy in one of our 
Colleges, many years since, whose exposition of 



82 OUR FAMILY OF- STATES. 

some interesting law in mechanics excited an en- 
thusiastic feeUng in the class. " But, gentlemen," 
said the teacher, '' consider, that while this appears 
well in words, you will have to allow at least 
one fifth for friction." Our subject is one of 
those which, in the very nature of things, involves 
friction. But the class were resolved to enjoy 
themselves over the discovery which they were 
contemplating ; and so they continued their ex- 
pressions of pleasure, notwithstanding the friction. 
As Balaam "lifted up his eyes, and saw 
Israel abiding in his tents according to his tribes, 
and the Spirit of God came upon him," that 
same Spirit can fill the heart of every misan- 
thropic prophet with love to these our tribes, 
and with visions of our future glory. The world 
itself will one day be seeking the union of its 
great families. Happy will it be if the final 
demonstration of its possibility, and the illustration 
of its beneficent effect, shall be found in these 
United States. As one puts a shell to his ear 
and fancies that he listens to the sea, our Union 
sings to our hearts not merely of one small shore, 
but of our whole race as a future Family of States. 
Anti-type of God's Israel ! " Rejoice, Zebulon, 
in thy going out, and Issachar in thy tents." 
Pleiades among the nations ! Land of Com- 
monwealths ! " Thou shalt yet call thy walls. 
Salvation ! and thy gates, Praise ! " 



Jan 24 1861 



